At approximately 4:42 p.m. on Wednesday afternoon, September 30, Governor Gavin Newsom signed SB 823, a budget trailer bill that will lead to the closure of the state’s troubled and violent youth prison system. Yet the bill is far more than that. It is also is designed as a historic reform measure intended to fundamentally transform the way that the state and its 58 counties approach youth justice.
In reaction to the probability of a DJJ shut down, in August, justice policy experts Laura Ridolfi, W. from the Haywood Burns Institute, Renée Menart, from the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, and Israel Villa, from the California Alliance of Youth and Community Justice, published a report, which quantified the “stark racial and geographic disparity in how young men and women are treated who have committed similar crimes,” in California’s juvenile justice system in general, and in DJJ in particular.
Article Written By Celeste Freemon. October 2, 2020.
